Sun speckles a shoulder of trees. A stirring
of leaves. A bruise of green light, electric.
A vein of cars on East Potomac Street, partially blocked

         by a stand of poplars. Horn bleats and ungreased brakes
                  commingle with the river’s crenelated chatter.
                           The sky is an absence of clouds, blue

as the fitted sheet my husband bullied around the edges
of our mattress. A replacement
for the satin set he bought for my fiftieth—

                  bunched in the trash with the chicken bones
                           and potato peels, stiff with blood.
         These radiated weeks have liquified the borders

of my body. Further down the bank,
a doe lowers her head to drink. The stretched surface
rips, ripples. The deer were thieves

                           when I was young. Teething the pink
                                    trumpets from my mother’s azaleas.
                  Across the river, a wastewater plant hums,

taller than the trees. A blank face of windowless brick,
the partial eclipse of the late shift merging
with the day. The things they do in there,

                  as meaningless to me as the small-print side effects
                                    wrapped around a pill bottle. The river
                           is polluted. Worse every year. No swimming,

no fishing or drinking—red-lettered signs
lodged in the silt. A bird of prey blots out the sun.
It’s heading upstream, to the source

                           where two competing branches crash and lunge,
                  like wrestlers. The churning keeps the water clean,
                                                      which feels like the point

of a patchily remembered myth—
collision as purification. Each year, more bodies
crammed on that slim crush of grass;

                                    there’s nowhere else to swim.
                  I watch a can of Coca-Cola ride the river’s brown.
                           The doe, unusually calm, continues to drink.